By Peter Menzel, Faith D’Aluisio

Hungry Planet is a gorgeous photographic journal from the same folks who created Material World. The idea is simple: travel the globe and photograph families in different cultures posing with piles all the food they eat over the course of a week. Besides making for nice photographs, the book acts as an informative introduction to food variety and issues of scarcity, plenty, production, and cooking from around the globe.

There are two reactions I can imagine from a first-world nation citizen to this gorgeous document: we’re very blessed to eat our readily available, relatively cheap processed food, or: man, we eat a lot of garbage and are wasteful, over-consumers. I lean more toward the latter, but I’m really glad to have leafed through this book and had my eyes opened as what extravagance our digestive tracts are treated to.

The simplest way to illustrate the disparity is to mention the two extremes: the poorest family in Chad, makes do with a weekly allotment of grains, goat meat, dried fish, a few limes, water… and that’s about it. The price: $1.23. This is to feed a family of six for a week.

Contrast this with the most extravagant American family, whose photograph is a smorgasborg of gut-busting, bloated nourishment, barely able to fit the image’s frame, for $341.98 a week. This is for a family of four.

Personally, I found this rather mind-blowing. I think I’ll look at my $1.50 cup of coffee in a different light.

Once the depressing stuff is internalized, it’s fun to explore the tasty range of mouth-watering and exotic foods. China has many convenience foods on sticks that were unfamiliar to me: stinky tofu, scorpions, and seahorses. Many nations eat parts of animals I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot barbecue skewer. Others delight in fruits and vegetables I have no idea which end is edible.

Industrialization has also affected the food we eat. The less well-off make do with grains and simple carbohydrates. As a population becomes more prosperous, protein is added to the diet. But the most technologically advanced populations gravitate towards convenience foods, preprepared meals, and packaged snacks - which ironically, are a return to simple carbohydrates - and unfortunately, ones that are notoriously unhealthy: salted, stuffed in a foil bag, and sold by a mega-corporation.

These highly processed convenience foods seem to gain a foothold in modern societies as they’re relatively cheap and allow people more leisure time. But one side effect is that cultural variances in diet are slowly vanishing. Australians eat “Rice Bubbles” which are their version of Rice Krispies cereal, the German family enjoys frozen pizza, and Japanese kids say their favorite food is potato chips. Pretty much every country knows about McDonald’s and inevitably, that nation’s youth flock to it when offered a choice. Will a day will come when the stinky tofu stick is passed up for a french fry?

The book also has one dutiful segment devoted to the unhealthy effects of too much processed food: obesity and diabetes. The majority of American adults are overweight. Burp.

But looking at Hungry Planet made me realize that there’s a whole lot of awesome organic and non-processed foods I haven’t tried. But instead of being a hunter-gatherer or growing the food myself, my first-world convenience option requires I hit Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, or the local farmer’s market. Not too back to basics there, but I guess it’s better than hitting the vending machine and then the gym.

Additional Reading: NPR, Spilt Milk, Neatorama

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